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by dmitriid 1430 days ago
> you may find that it is less risky or costly. Many people chose e2e encrypted messengers because they don't trust a third party with their private messages

Private messages are not money. Example: you ordered some goods and those arrived in bad shape. What's your recourse in the trustless world?
1 comments
olalonde 1430 days ago
There are some semi-trustless systems that work with escrows [0]. But realistically, an arbitration system does indeed require a trusted party.

There is no trustless world, just a world where trustless is an option and where "trustful" systems can be built on trustless foundations.

[0] Those systems give some guarantees about the trusted party (e.g. that they can't just run with the money).

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dmitriid 1430 days ago
> where the "trustful" systems are built on trustless foundations.

You cannot build trust on a trustless foundation. As, again, the crypto world is busy rediscovering.

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olalonde 1430 days ago
What do you mean by that? I don't see why there couldn't be a centralized service offering payment dispute arbitration on top of Bitcoin (this is what I meant by building "trustful" systems being built on top of trustless foundations).
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dmitriid 1430 days ago
> why there couldn't be a centralized service offering payment dispute arbitration on top of Bitcoin

What exactly does Bitcoin provide in this case?

> this is what I meant by building "trustful" systems being built on top of trustless foundations

So, a service that exists outside bitcoin, has a trust system built entirely outside bitcoin and only doing something with bitcoin because reasons... is "building trustful systems on top of trustless systems".

I don't think you know what "building on top" means.

Edit: grammar and mobile typos

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olalonde 1429 days ago
Do you extend the same reasoning to fiat?

There are many centralized services that do dispute arbitration on top of USD. Those systems are built entirely outside of USD. PayPal for example doesn't have an account at the Federal reserve nor does it handle physical cash. They are effectively "off-chain" payment systems for USD.

So I guess your question is, what are the advantages of BTC over a fiat currency like USD. The answer is two folds:

1) BTC has an open network (the Bitcoin blockchain) allowing users to exit payment systems for the purpose of self-custody or for interconnecting with other payment systems. There's no equivalent system with fiat. Self-custody of USD literally requires transporting and storing pieces of paper. You also can't directly transfer USD from PayPal to say, CashApp.

2) BTC has a predictable money supply. Fiat currency doesn't: money supply can be arbitrarily inflated.

In addition to the above, Bitcoin enables the creation of payment systems that are more tightly built on top of it, like the Lightning network, which preserves many of the properties of Bitcoin (e.g. trustless). You could also build a dispute arbitration system where the arbiter just needs to be semi-trusted (e.g. there are schemes that can cryptographically prevent the arbiter from stealing escrowed funds, etc.).

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dmitriid 1429 days ago
> Do you extend the same reasoning to fiat?

We are talking bout fiat? No.

> So I guess your question is, what are the advantages of BTC over a fiat currency like USD.

No. The question is: what does the trustless blockchain offer when you still have to rely on a centralised trusted entity.

> BTC has a predictable money supply. Fiat currency doesn't: money supply can be arbitrarily inflated.

Which immediately means that whoever got in early and got the first initial supply is at great advantage compared to anyone who got in later. For example compared to any people born 20 years from now.

> You could also build a dispute

Could. Maybe. Should. Perhaps. That's all you can ever hear from crypto proponents.

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